A Student's Guide

How to Study

It's the chapter you've all been waiting for.

Sadly, there isn't some master way to study so that you'll get full marks with everything you do. If that was the case, I would be at MIT right now - if I remembered to fill out the application (sorry again mom). Different people have different methods to best help them. I'll share with you a couple of resources I know and explain how I would study for a specific subject that goes down to humanities and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math).

Before we get started, I want to explain another thing about myself I forgot to mention in the "About Me" which will be quite important in this chapter. I have ADHD inattentive present. That means that I'm not hyperactive and bouncing off the walls given I'm pretty calm and introverted. Instead, I have a really bad attention span. I don't mean drifting off in lectures, I mean you can have a conversation with me with our eyes locked, and I would drift off and not be able to hear everything. It was both embarrassing and frustrating.

Before I was diagnosed, I didn't think much of ADHD. Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series had characters with ADHD and my childhood favorite Youtuber Ryan Higa/Nigahiga had ADHD too. Everyone always had the "ADHD" moment when they forget something or didn't pay attention. But that's the problem with ADHD, people can sometimes experience it which downplays the actual severity of the disorder when people always experience it.

I was diagnosed in my sophomore year in college when the results came out a day before my birthday - quite the gift for myself. High school was a breeze, but entering college, a school such as UC Berkeley, I believed that I would have a tough time anyway. However, it wasn't until I began studying with my friends did I realize the differences in productivity when we were learning the same things at the same time. However, I just believed I was lazy and unmotivated as a student and I just needed to try harder. It wasn't until I had my first summer internship did I realize how much this can really affect me when my supervisor had to give me the same instructions multiple times, how I had to keep asking follow-up questions because I didn't remember the instructions, or how I couldn't follow along in a meeting no matter how hard I kept reminding myself I needed to but still drifted.

From my diagnosis, the high school work was easy enough for me to breeze through without studying. However, since I didn't develop good study habits when I actually needed to study with these difficult courses in college, I suddenly struggled. After my diagnosis, my friend timed me when I studied without my knowledge, and I had an attention span of an average of 12 minutes before I was on my phone or something with the breaks being much longer than the 12 minutes. Now you'll probably want to comment things like: "omg same", "why is this me?", "I totally relate". And that's my point, anyone can experience it, but you shouldn't downplay or belittle this disorder just because of that. People with ADHD face discrimination because of it. People can have hidden disabilities and you should never discriminate against them regardless if you can see or not see that disability.

From this, I want to then introduce you to a resource your school or college should have. My school has the Disabled Students' Program (DSP) where they give students resources, services, and tools they need to help them in school and life. There's a process to be properly assessed for you to be in the program to make sure you're not abusing it. Once you have entered it, you get accommodations such as participating in workshops, getting recording devices, or getting extra time in your exams or homework. Both students and professors have belittled the program. A student grader confessed how a professor told them to grade DSP students harder because they didn't believe in the program. It isn't about equality but equity. Yes, there may be some students who abuse the program, but for every one student who does, there are a hundred if not a thousand who need it. I entered the program right before the pandemic so I haven't been able to utilize the program well with the transition to online classes. With this, I want to explain to you that there are resources out there that can help you and this is one of them.